510 Mr. T. S. Davies on Geometry and Geometers. 



Their works, however, live after them : but at present, chiefly 

 forming portions of books of high pretensions, and bearing 

 other names than theirs on the title-pages. These were men 

 of the school of Thomas Simpson ; their career was marked 

 out by him; and. their tastes were formed upon the models 

 which he bequeathed to them. It may be safely affirmed that, 

 as regards geometry generally, and geometrical construction 

 especially, no works in our language furnish so many beauti- 

 ful, varied, and instructive exemplars as the three works of 

 Simpson, viz. his " Elements of Geometry," the supplementary 

 part of his "Elements of Algebra," and the second part of 

 his " Select Exercises.^^ It is much to be regretted that Dr. 

 Stewart's Propositiones Geometrical was not added to the 

 scanty libraries of these able geometers, by its being published 

 in their own, instead of a dead lancjuage. That day of learned 

 loppery is, however, gone by, when a man who wishes to 

 publish a work on science must claim his title to " respectable 

 birth, parentage, and education," by his Latin prose composi- 

 tion, before he can obtain the notice of the dilettanti of the 

 so-called literary and scientific world. Justice, however, will 

 yet be done to these men, humble artisans, excisemen, and 

 country-schoolmasters though most of them were. The able 

 analyses of their little duodecimo annuals which is in progress 

 in the Mechanics' Magazine, by Mr. Wilkinson of Burnley, 

 will do much towards effecting this purpose; and I should 

 hope that book- manufacturers will in the end be compelled to 

 bow to the force of public opinion, so far as to give at least 

 some distinct acknowledgement of the sources whence they 

 obtain the materials of their works. A work might be 

 pointed out — a work which has passed through several large 

 editions, and produced to its "author" large sums of money — 

 which is made up 'wholly owi of the periodicals written by these 

 men — without, in any single case, more than a verbal alteration 

 in the solutions, and very rarely even so much as that. Yet 

 there is not the least hint given as to whence these beautiful 

 investigations were taken ; nor indeed any marked indication 

 that they did not "drop from the clouds," or were the honest 

 produce of the mind of him whose name adorns the title-page. 



Shooters' Hill, Oct. 27, 1849. 



